- Vance tops CPAC presidential straw poll
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“For the second year in a row, United States Vice President JD Vance has topped the straw poll at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the biggest right-wing gatherings in the country. The poll is a bellwether – albeit, not necessarily an accurate one – for who might ultimately become the Republican nominee for the next presidential race. … The results were revealed on stage Saturday. Vance had swept up 53 percent of the votes cast by nearly 1,600 attendees. But rising up the ranks was another senior official under US President Donald Trump: his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A former senator from Florida, Rubio notched 35 percent of the vote. It was a markedly improved standing for Rubio, who tied for fourth place at last year’s CPAC straw poll.” (03/28/26)
- Record number of congresscritters retiring ahead of midterms
Source: ABC News
“On Friday, Republican Congressman Sam Graves of Missouri became the 36th Republican — and 57th House member — to announce plans not to seek re-election, saying it was time to ‘pass the torch’ to a new generation. In fact, more Republicans are retiring ahead of the midterms than at any point in nearly a century, according to an ABC News tally of retirement announcements and a review of historical data since 1930 compiled by the Brookings Institution. … So far, 21 House Democrats have announced plans to retire, more than the total that left ahead of the 2018 midterms, but fewer than the 29 Democrats who did not run for office again before the party lost the House majority in 2021.” (03/29/26)
- France: Police foil apparent bomb attack outside of Bank of America building in Paris
Source: CBS News
“French police stopped an apparent bomb attack outside a Bank of America building in Paris early Saturday, and a man was arrested as he was about to set off a homemade explosive device. Police grabbed the man just after he placed a device, made of nine pints of a liquid believed to be fuel, 23 ounces of explosive powder, and an ignition system, according to an initial assessment. The device will undergo a full analysis at the Paris police’s forensics lab. The incident occurred around 3:30 a.m., while the office was closed. No employees were injured, according to the bank.” (03/28/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/france-paris-police-foil-attack-bank-of-america/
- Jerusalem: Israeli occupation forces block Latin Patriarch from Palm Sunday mass
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Israeli police have blocked the head of the Catholic church in Jerusalem from entering Christianity’s holiest site to celebrate Palm Sunday. The Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and the Reverend Francesco Ielpo were stopped outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — believed to be the site of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, and where they planned to hold a mass to mark the start of Holy Week, church authorities said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said worshippers of ‘all faiths’ had been asked [sic] not to visit sites in Jerusalem’s Old City for safety reasons after recent Iranian attacks. But the move has drawn strong criticism from global leaders as well as the church.” (03/29/26)
- Judge pauses blockbuster merger between TV station owners Nexstar and Tegna
Source: NBC News
“A federal judge late Friday put a hold on the $6.2 billion merger between Nexstar Media Group and Tegna, a deal that would create the largest operator of local television stations in the country. U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley in California granted a request from DirecTV, which argued in a lawsuit that the pending merger violates federal antitrust laws. Eight attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, filed a separate lawsuit on similar legal grounds. … Nunley issued a 14-day temporary restraining order and scheduled an April 7 hearing. Nexstar declined to comment. Tegna did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice both approved the merger earlier this month. President Donald Trump also publicly backed the deal.” (03/28/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-pauses-merger-tv-station-owners-nexstar-tegna-rcna265626
- You can’t hide your lying ICE
Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko“I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren’t the lies you tell to cover something up. They’re the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, ‘You know we’re lying. We know that you know we’re lying. And there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.’ They lie about everything. When they’re caught in a lie, they lie again. They lie when the facts aren’t on their side, but also when they are. And they never, ever admit that they lied.” (03/28/26)
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/you-cant-hide-your-lying-ice
- OK, Fine, Give TSA Agents Back Pay … But Then Send Them Home For Good
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“At airports across the US, Transportation Security Administration agents have been ‘working’ — that is, impeding, harassing, ogling, and groping air travelers — without pay since Valentine’s Day due to a congressional feud over funding for their parent department. Well, some of them, anyway. Several hundred have quit; quite a few are calling in sick more often. On March 27, US president Donald Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security to start paying TSA employees again, using ‘funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations.’ They may start getting paid again as soon as Monday. They should also STOP getting paid again as soon as possible. Permanently. The very existence of the TSA has been a costly 25-year mistake.” (03/28/26)
- The DOJ Wants To Drop Charges Against Two Cops Who Played a Crucial Role in Breonna Taylor’s Death
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Jacob Sullum“Louisville, Kentucky, Detective Joshua Jaynes lied when he applied for the March 2020 search warrant that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death. Then he lied about his lies. Sgt. Kyle Meany, the supervisor who approved the warrant application, also tried to cover up its shortcomings. According to an August 2022 federal indictment, both officers knew that police did not have probable cause to search Taylor’s apartment. … Taylor’s death did not flow inexorably from the warrant that Jaynes obtained. It is nevertheless true that Taylor would not have died in a hail of gunfire but for Jaynes'[s] fraudulent and misleading affidavit, which Meany approved. That reality underlines the potentially grave consequences of letting police officers make shit up to manufacture probable cause—a danger that does not seem to trouble the main Justice Department official charged with protecting Americans’ civil rights.” (03/28/26)
- The Digital Leviathan
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Renaud Beauchard“What is the information state? It is a regime that governs not through legislature or courts or votes, but through the invisible digital architecture that now mediates nearly every dimension of public life. Siegel’s definition is evolutive: ‘a state organized on the principle that it exists to protect the sovereign rights of individuals’ is replaced by ‘a digital leviathan that wields power through opaque algorithms and the manipulation of digital swarms.’ … Its goal, Siegel insists, was never simply to censor, never merely to oppress. It was to rule. The kind of brazen censorship we observed during the Biden era and that is so tempting to our warring rulers again is not a bug; it is a feature of the new normal.” (03/28/26)
- No one is “addicted” to Instagram or YouTube
Source: spiked
by Frank Furedi“I have little sympathy for the multibillion-dollar tech companies, Meta and Google, which were this week forced to pay out a combined $6million in damages to a 20-year-old woman. But I have even less sympathy for the notion of ‘social-media addiction’ that led to this extraordinary payout. … The real issue raised by this case is the aversion to responsibility that now prevails in the West. This is aided by the commanding influence of the narrative of ‘addiction.’ We live in a world where bad habits, as they used to be called, have been rebranded, medicalised and diagnosed as addictions. … The flourishing of the addiction industry is partly driven by individuals’ demand to be relieved of responsibility for their bad behaviour. It is also fuelled by the Therapy Industrial Complex, which aims to turn people into vulnerable patients.” (03/28/26)
- As War Rages vs. Iran, Time for Peace in Ukraine
Source: Real Clear Politics
by Steve Cortes“As the world understandably focuses on the Middle East, the Russia-Ukraine war shifts to a fulcrum moment. This new juncture provides President Trump with an opportunity to prove that he is still, indeed, a president for peace. He can reaffirm to his base, and to the world, that he is the negotiator-in-chief who brokers diplomatic solutions across the globe, including the historic Abraham Accords. Regarding the Trump base, polling shows that only 38% of Republican voters now believe that the war vs. Iran will conclude in the days or weeks to come. Moreover, 37% of GOP voters oppose any ground troops in Iran. So, opportunity beckons in the Black Sea region. In a recent breakout interview by the Associated Press of General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former top military commander of Ukraine, provides startling revelations regarding his battles with Zelensky – and the relevance for the future of postwar Ukraine.” (03/28/26)
- ICE at Airports Trains Us to Accept Being Terrorized in Our Daily Lives
Source: The Intercept
by Mathew Rodriguez“Shortly after Trump deployed ICE agents to airports, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon may have tipped the administration’s hand. Bannon speculated on his ‘War Room’ podcast that the immigration force’s presence at TSA security checkpoints was a ‘test run’ ahead of the November midterms. Maybe, Bannon seemed to suggest, it was a rehearsal, meant to test how far the administration can stretch our tolerance for agents as part of the landscape of our daily lives without pushback. … If we can accept the reality that Trump’s personal army is requiring more documentation from us just to board an Airbus, how long until we are forced to tolerate them in our voting booths and beyond?” (03/28/26)
- The Fog of a Trump-Led War
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg“One of the funniest things about the Trump era is how people have realized how to appeal to Trump’s conception of self-interest. That’s why everyone is giving him awards and gold statues: He’s a sucker for flattery and praise, and he’s incapable of grasping how small it makes him look. Donald Trump has a similar challenge understanding the Iranians because he thinks everyone eventually just wants a ‘deal.’ That assumption worked out for him pretty well — so far — in Venezuela, because the Maduro regime was basically just a bunch of mobsters pretending to be socialists. But the Iranians want different things because they believe different things. And they are willing to watch a lot of the world burn to get them. In fact, they’re willing to light the matches.” (03/27/26)
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/trump-iran-war-partisanship/
- Why Crypto-Backed Mortgages Matter for Expanding Access to Homeownership
Source: Bitcoin.com
by Kevin Helms“Growing barriers to homeownership are prompting financial firms to redefine how wealth is evaluated, with Coinbase partnering with Better Home & Finance Holding Company to enable crypto-backed mortgages supported by Fannie Mae that allow borrowers to use bitcoin or USDC instead of cash for down payments. … Forced liquidation introduces tradeoffs, including forfeiting potential price appreciation and triggering tax liabilities, which can discourage participation in the housing market. Crypto-backed structures alter that dynamic by converting digital holdings into usable collateral, allowing borrowers to secure financing without selling assets.” (03/28/26)
https://news.bitcoin.com/why-crypto-backed-mortgages-matter-for-expanding-access-to-homeownership/
- The End of Immigration
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman“Donald Trump’s impulsive decision to deploy large numbers of ICE agents to hang out at America’s airport Cinnabons — there’s no indication that they are actually helping demoralized, unpaid TSA employees deal with long lines at airport security — may have unintended political consequences: it will remind Americans about how much they dislike ICE and the great harm that it’s doing. Nonetheless, recent data show that the administration’s crackdown on immigration is working. Immigration to the United States is plunging and may be about to go into reverse. And that plunge is making America poorer and weaker – now and in the long-run.” (03/27/26)
- The Third Gulf War Follows Directly From the Last Two
Source: Persuasion
by Seva Gunitsky“Time has a way of compressing history. The Hundred Years’ War was a series of three separate wars that must have felt as distinct to its contemporaries as the World Wars feel to us now. But those three wars were a long time ago, so we lump them together into one conflict. Besides, we are wise. We have seen the direction of History and know they were all fought over the unresolved question of England’s rivalry with France. I suspect future historians will apply the same compression to the three Gulf Wars of the unipolar era. While 1991, 2003, and 2026 are distinct in many ways, they all revolve around repeated attempts by the hegemon to impose its order on a region that it appears to understand less and less each time.” (03/27/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/americas-long-war-in-the-middle-east
- After the Nation-State
Source: Foreign Policy
by Michael Hirsh“No one has done more than Donald Trump to assert the ‘primacy of nations’ in today’s world, to quote his National Security Strategy. And the U.S. president has many nationalist fellow travelers in high places who also preach a fierce, almost religious, devotion to the nation-state — including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and insurgent right-wing parties around the globe. The problem, however, is that the nation-state is badly broken and no longer working for average people around the world.” (03/27/26)
- Putting boots on the ground could kill Trump’s presidency
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jack Hunter“It would seem the fate of Trump’s presidency lies in his decision to enter into a ground war with Iran — something successive presidents, including himself, have promised not to do since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which millions of American men and women served over a 20-year period, draining resources, morale and, frankly, recruitment potential for the services. In poll after poll, the majority of Americans oppose going to war with Iran at all, and fear a prolonged war that will suck the country into another quagmire. This should set alarm bells in the administration. Republicans continue to support the war but in decreasing numbers, and they have clearly soured even more on the idea of sending in ground troops. There’s more. A new Fox News poll released on Wednesday revealed just how low Trump’s numbers were sinking and why.” (03/27/26)
- Hollywood Still Trying To Corrupt J. R. R. Tolkien’s Work
Source: The Federalist
by John Daniel Davidson“If you thought Hollywood was done trying to corrupt and destroy the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien, think again. This week Variety reported that Warner Brothers announced yet another Lord Of The Rings spinoff film is in development — and that Stephen Colbert and his son are writing it. Colbert is apparently a ‘vocal Tolkien fanatic,’ and is working on a script derived from the early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that didn’t make it into Peter Jackson’s acclaimed trilogy. … Colbert said he pitched Jackson on the idea of a film ‘that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’ Based on the synopsis of Colbert’s script, the answer is clearly no.” (03/27/26)
https://thefederalist.com/2026/03/27/hollywood-is-still-trying-to-corrupt-j-r-r-tolkiens-work/
- Afroman For President!
Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan“Each era has its superheroes, and the Trump era may have finally stumbled across one for the ages. You may remember him from such hits (well, hit) as “Because I Got High” — the chill, stoner, self-mocking classic of 2000. But way back then, we had no idea that Afroman’s true masterpiece was yet to come. And here it is: a viral 2022 album called Lemon Pound Cake, which comprises a series of songs about a botched police raid on his home. … the poor wittle white cops were so upset by being woasted in these videos, they did the woke thing and sued Afroman for $3.9 million, which would have easily bankrupted him. The defamation trial had some fantastic moments, and the whiny cops walked right into a Streisand effect: so many more people saw the videos — 20 million views and counting — because they sued over them than if they’d just ignored them.” (03/27/26)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/afroman-for-president-6d2
- Not a techno-optimist, nor a pessimist, but a third, worse thing
Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz“I used to be a techno-optimist. Today, I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong. I do not bemoan the invention of antibiotics. I have little respect for primitivism. Either they haven’t thought through how many children and pregnant women live every year because technology has made their diseases preventable or survivable, or you’re a psychopath. But I’m less sure than I was in the past that technology has been overwhelmingly good for humans. Maybe it’s just that I turned 40. Being middle-aged will have one wondering whether maybe stuff really was better when I was younger — or even earlier.” (03/27/26)
https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/not-a-techno-optimist-nor-a-pessimist
- Unattended Baggage, episode 334
Source: Unattended Baggage
“This Business Will Get Out of Hand.” (03/28/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-334-this-business-will-get
- The Good Fight, 03/28/26
Source: Yascha Mounk
“David Autor on the Scars That Money Can’t Heal.” (03/28/26)
- LPALive, episode 66
Source: LP Alliance
“National Chair Debate at North Carolina state convention.” (03/28/26)
- The Focus Group Podcast, 03/28/26
Source: The Bulwark
“PSA: AI is NOT Your Boyfriend!! (with Megan McArdle).” (03/28/26)